


In Darkness

by kihadu



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Blind Thranduil, Blindness, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 02:38:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5317349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihadu/pseuds/kihadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thranduil wakes in darkness, and wakes again, until he realises that it is not an eternal night but rather, he cannot see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this post](http://aiffe.tumblr.com/post/70264082311/what-do-your-elf-eyes-see-so-basically-i-had) about how far Thranduil's scars go.

When he wakes it is a night without a moon, sky covered over in stars such that his chamber is a blackened mystery to him. No fires here, warmth inherent or magical, and Thranduil aches as he stretches over the silk of his sheets. Battle, he remembers, and fire. His limbs more than ache, they hurt as deep as his bones. When he shifts upright in search of a pitcher of water from which to drink his joints scream, and his face is in agony. His eyes are on fire, and he brings up both hands as if he will claw them out. He falls back, and passes out.

 

When next he wakes he can hear voices through the window, but it is night, and it must have been raining as the curtain is closed and the air smells fresh. With the curtain drawn the room is left in heavy shadow. He hurts less, but that means little Even the cool weight of the silk over his body is painful, and he opens his mouth to call for aid. Instead he finds himself exhausted, too exhausted to realise it when he succumbs again to sleep.

 

Thranduil wakes and has no reason for the dark. It simply is. He lies on silk sheets stiff with sweat and merely breathes. He feels as though he has not left this bed for a century. But when he moves he hurts, but it is not dihabilitating. He pushes aside the sheets and sits up. On top of the dresser across from the bed there is always tinder ready to light a lamp; three strides and he fumbles for it. He has lit it countless times before but when it strikes it does not burn. He strikes again and still, it does not burn. Irritated, he slides fingers to the edge of the match. The heat of fire is familiar and horrid, and he drops the whole thing from his hands.

There is fire. He simply cannot see it.

He beats a hasty retreat to bed, curls up on his side, and forces himself to sleep.

 

Thranduil lies awake in bed and cannot see a thing. He has gone so far as to touch his face but recoiled at the shape of his skin, the ravaged flesh, the gaping muscle revealing bone beneath.

He lies in bed for as long as he can stomach, as long as he can allow himself to wallow in this misery. This is two weeks fast approaching three, and then he tells himself that enough is enough and he will not be an absent king. He rings the bell set by his bed. An attendant comes, and helps him up and guides him to his bath. He washes himself, but clatters the soap onto the floor and has to seek it clumsily.

A hundred times before he had risen from the bath and waited imperiously to be dried and tended by hands not his own. But, blind and still wounded he feels undignified, dripping, a nuisance. It is almost more than he can bear, but he sees sense enough to stand tall with shoulders squared in a haughty fashion - too haughty, an over-exaggeration to cover his shortcomings - while he is dried, his hair combed, a robe pulled over his shoulders.

He does the buttons himself, tiny, delicate things, and is inordinately proud of himself for completing such a simple task without failure. And then he chides himself, and the chiding turns to determination.

He is a king. He will not be bested by a dragon, not even in this.

 

He begins with his bedchamber, the most familiar of his rooms, bar the bathing chambers and the throne room. He counts the steps from wall to wall, listens to the whisper of the curtain against the window frame, learns how to pull his bedsheets back smoothly by touch alone.

Next his halls, and then the room where he eats when he does not eat at a feast, small and private and used for companionable meals. He eats there, attended but alone, until he thinks he has learned how to find food on a plate, with a fork, how to find his wine glass without knocking it over.

It is not easy. It takes him months of learning and even then he struggles. His first meal with another since the battle is with his son. A mere child should not have to see his father in such a state, but he comes, and if the silence is anything to go by he is unhappy, discomforted. Conversation is awkward. Thranduil is conscious that his fingers are overly long, his gestures remarkably clumsy. He loses a tomato to the floor, struggles to find the last corner of pastry on his plate. When he reaches for wine he knocks something over and Legolas cries out.

‘ _Ada_ , this is folly,’ he says. His voice is lower down, and behind it the noises of cloth on stone. Mopping up whatever mess Thranduil has made.

The words cut Thranduil to the core.

He gets out of the chair and kneels where he guesses Legolas is. He puts his hand first on wet stone and then on his son’s hand. ‘I will not abjucate. You are too young, and this is mere injury. It is not death.’

Legolas sighs. ‘What will they say, when they know? I have kept this secret as best I can. You have had few attendants. All visitors have been turned away. I have answered letters with your signature, poor though my forgery is.’

‘They will not know,’ Thranduil says. It has been an idea playing in the corners of his mind, next to this desperate need to keep himself hidden until he has learned to navigate his own palace.

‘You must tell someone. I will not be by your side every day.’

Thranduil sits back onto his heels, mirroring how he imagines his son has moved; a guess based on the noise of fabric, the swish of hair.

‘You will not?’ he teases. He hopes his son smiles, and does not resist the urge to stretch out a hand to find out. Legolas acquiesces, and Thranduil runs his hand over the planes of his face. There is an intimacy between them that he has not experienced since his son was a child proper, half Thranduil’s height and overly energetic. He is glad, but wishes it were not for such a reason as this.

He lets his hand drop. ‘Galion already knows, he has tended my side during this.’ It is a guess, since Galion has said nothing, but Legolas does not disagree. And Legolas, of all the elves in Greenwood, he would disagree.

‘Tell one of your guard.’

‘I’ve told you.’

Another sigh; his teasing his not welcome.

‘Tell Tauriel, or Amathel. Either will stand by you.’ Legolas is silent, then, ‘You know I am right.’

‘I raised you well enough to find the truth behind complex matters,’ Thranduil agrees. ‘I will tell them. Both of them, for if I cannot rely on your being here I cannot rely on either of them. A trinity of guards and my butler, will that suit you?’

‘It would suit me better if you were well,’ Legolas says, and from the rush of air immediately following it is clear he is horrified he said such a thing. Both of them are more honest together, saying things not properly spoken. It leads to many arguments, more than Thranduil ever had with his own father, and while he hates it he is glad that his son still feels free to speak his mind. He hopes that will never change.

He finds his son’s face again. ‘It would suit me, too.’

He tells both guards. Their responses are different; where Tauriel is all exclamations and horror Amathel is silent and sad. He dislikes the pity and revulsion but he accepts their words of sorrow and support, and finds himself gladder to know he will not be discarded for something beyond his control.

He resumes his new habits of pacing the halls, but expands them: he ventures a short way into the gardens and forests where the strength of the trees help his own to grow; in the night, when there are fewer people about, he finds his way through the confusing criss-cross of bridges and ladders that keep the elves in the trees; at Amathel's suggestion he does what he used to do, and stands on the side of the training ground to oversee his soldiers' practice. At first the clang of metal or the thud of arrows means nothing, but the longer he sits the more he can distinguish what each sound means, made easier by the sounds they make; laughter, and teasing, and jibes when an attack fails.

They are glad to see him, also, gladder than he would have thought after the failure of the attack on the dragon. Their death rites were carried out while he slept, but no feast has been had. There are muted questions about that fact, none wanting to question his choices but still wanting to celebrate that they still live, and remember those that do not.

He intensifies his study of how to conduct himself in the darkness that is his world. He takes meals with his three guards, and while the two women are less familiar with him and so do not act so comfortably as Legolas, they soon learn to laugh or ignore his clumsiness, let it slide away rather than linger in awkward silence. Their presence puts pressure on him to perform better, and he learns.

There have been some remarks on his appearance, both by his guards and his son, but also the soldiers and servants and the other elves he passes as he walks his halls. In the silence of night, which is no different to him than the day in theory but still he feels it, the cooler air, the quieter halls, the different birds making their dusk-time songs, during these hours he works on his magic. Some of it is healing, a faint hope that his skin will knit itself together, and some of it is glamour.

He was always good at this, fascinated as a child by tattoos but of course he would never marr his skin with such, so he play-made shapes that sat on his skin and shifted when he moved. He had never attempted such for his face.

He starts with the eyes, because they are most important, and plays with them until his son agrees they look right. Then he throws a feast, and all the elves of his kingdom come to his halls to make merry. It lasts days, as elvish feasts are wont to do, and it is exhausting. His subjects all feel the need to talk to him, to acknowledge him, and those that come without words are lost to the noise and he relies on his son - relies too much - to tell him who is close and who is far, where he must look. He forgets to make his eyes blink as often as they need.

When it is over it is difficult to feel successful for such a minor thing, but he does. He spoke to his subjects, to his kin. He drank without spilling, ate without fumbling. There were stares aplenty but more yet words of thanks and wishes of good health; his skin is ravaged but still his place as king is held with the honour and respect he has always had.

The span of elves is long and he rushes nothing. He works patiently on his magic and even more patiently on his battle skills. He remembers teaching his son and is glad he did it so well, for now he teaches him back. It is years before he dares touch metal again, fearing grave injury for his inability to judge distance.

The reach of his hearing grows, until he can hear a single drip of water, until even the heartbeat of those within the same room as himself is not a secret to him. He learns to step with the grace that he envied in his father, delicate treading on familiar ground to avoid any embarrassing collisions. His nerves settle with practice; he becomes confident.

He does not leave the forest, and even within he does not go far beyond his own palace. His son goes, and returns, and when he has finished his reports Thranduil must hide himself away in shame and fear, but any contemplation of carrying out tasks rightfully his own has him trembling.

It his his forest and he trusts it, and in some ways he is the forest - It has always been that when he is well the forest flourishes; his good cheer brings about a good season. But now he is injured and unable to navigate it, and he cannot hunt, and there are things amongst the trees that are not under his command, and he is scared. He is ashamed to admit it but in the silence and darkness that his whole life has become he is scared.  

Out there in the world there are dragons, and lesser things beside but no less dangerous, especially to him now, especially to him in such a state as this. 

He wraps himself away, shrouds himself in beautiful clothes and refuses entry to all visitors. Knowing the toll of the last battle he does not offer support to neighbours in the midst of their own strife, he does not even offer food and shelter. When missives come he has them read out but then he has them burned. He cannot leave his kingdom, now, chained more thoroughly than he has ever been. 

He learns his halls and his forest, and he forgets he ever had duty beyond his own borders. 

 

Nearly ten years he has existed in darkness, and he is walking his halls in the early dawn, tilting his face to find the little bits of warm sun in the cool morning air. He hears the footsteps of an elf walking towards him and he does not alter his path, knowing they will step to the side to allow him to pass.

‘Good morning, my lord,’ the elf says.

He nods, and pauses his step because she has paused hers.

‘My lord,’ the elf says, a little hesitant, ‘You are nearly healed.’

He touches his face. The glamour is strong, and his fingers do not pass through it.

‘Another ten years and I think I might be well again,’ Thranduil says. He makes the glamour hint a smile. His lips beneath struggle to form the same shape so cleanly. A rustle of hair and silk, and he gives a nod in return and resumes stalking his halls. Silent, and alone, but every inch becoming as familiar to him as the scars that lie hidden on his skin.

 


End file.
